Texas Prosecutors Lived In A State Of Terror Before They Were Gunned Down

Kaufman County Sheriff David Byrnes, centre, walks away from a news conference on March 31.

A Texas district attorney and an assistant DA who were killed within months of each other both seemed to know they might be targeted.

Kaufman County DA Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, were gunned down in their home this weekend — two months after Assistant DA Mark Hasse was shot in broad daylight near a courthouse. They were both reportedly armed all the time and on high alert before they were killed.

After Hasse’s death, authorities considered that it might be payback from white supremacist prison gang the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. In November the Kaufman County DA’s office helped indict 34 alleged ABT members, 10 of whom could get the death penalty.

The DA’s office was warned last year the ABT might be retaliating against them, and both Hasse and McLelland seemed to take that warning to heart.

Colleen Dunbar, a lawyer, told CNN that she spoke to Hasse a week before he was killed, and that he said he’d begun carrying a gun to work every day at the courthouse.

“He told me he would use a different exit every day because he was fearful for his life,” Dunbar told CNN.

McLelland also carried a gun everywhere, even when he was walking his dog, because he thought he’d be more likely to be targeted outside, the AP reported. In an AP interview before he died, McLelland also said he told his employees they needed to get more adept at dealing with violence.

“The people in my line of work are going to have to get better at it,” McClelland told the AP.